THE FILM

SYNOPSIS

Aya was a slave. At the age of 16, the young Cambodian peasant was sold to work as a maid in Malaysia, where she was exploited and beaten during two years without receiving any salary. Now that she has returned to her village just as poor as when she left, what is left of her humanity?

The Storm Makers traces modern-day slavery in Cambodia, by uncovering the fate of this young woman and following, in parallel, the daily lives of two human traffickers, a local recruiter and the head of a trafficking network. Cambodians call them « Mey Kechol »: The Storm Makers.

From the impoverished remote villages to the bustling urban centre of Phnom Penh, the film reveals a unique perspective on the exploitation of Cambodia’s rural population and questions what is the price of a life in a country experiencing uninhibited economic development.

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CHARACTERS

Aya

“I should have died over there”, says 20-year-old Aya. At the age of 16, Aya was sold to work as a maid in Malaysia, where she was exploited and beaten during two years without receiving any salary. Now that she has returned to Cambodia just as poor as when she left, what is left of her humanity? What are her plans for the future, doing odd jobs and surviving on with one dollar a day, while she has to cope alone with the violence of two years of enslavements?

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Pou Houy

Pou Houy owns a recruitment agency based in Phnom Penh, and claims to have sold more than 500 girls. He has no shame in admitting that he never cared about what happened to them and that he’s only interested in profit. Although Pou Houy’s company stands accused by local media to participate in the human trafficking business in Cambodia, he has never been investigated by the police. He continues to recruit young, poor and rural peasants to migrate abroad.

Ming Dy

Pou Houy also recruits new Mey Kechol, extending his network in to the remote rural areas. Ming Dy, 50, sold her own daughter to Pou Houy, and has brought him more girls from her village. She justifies this by claiming that it is the only way to pay back her debts…

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Filming from the perspective of traffickers

“I wanted to understand what kind of persons the traffickers were. My purpose was neither to judge them nor to reduce their responsibility. I wanted to focus on the personal reasons that led them to sell human beings. I wanted to give the audience the opportunity to delve into traffickers’ daily lives. Therefore I filmed them face to face, with the idea that the more we get into their minds, the more we can understand their motives and actions. »

Filming the victims in the mirror of their traffickers

« I wanted to free the young migrants of their status of merchandise, to which they have been reduced by the traffickers, giving them the possibility to speak out and tell their own stories in details. […] I want migrants like Aya to feel free in front of the camera, allowing words to serve as a therapy and an escape from the past: Speaking to cure and to free themselves. »

DIRECTOR

GUILLAUME SUON

Guillaume Suon is a French-Cambodian filmmaker, who has focused his first documentary films on Cambodia’s history and contemporary society.

Trained by the Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rithy Panh, Guillaume Suon is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talent Campus and a fellow of the Sundance Institute and the IDFAcademy.

FILMOGRAPHY

The Last Refuge (2013, 65′)

Aung San Suu Kyi Award for ASEAN Films, HRHDIFF 2013

Best SEA Documentary Award, Freedom Film Fest 2014

Official selections: Amiens International Film Festival 2013, FIFDH 2014